AN: Did somebody ask for an update?
Rachel had always had such expectations for her life. Huge aspirations to strive for, fighting past so many obstacles in her quest for that dream, and to make it hers, to own it and show it off to all those who had previously stood in her way or questioned her ability. She'd called it "Broadway" but in reality she'd simply wanted people to notice her, to appreciate her. It was a need to be seen as special; she wanted respect - wanted to escape the bonds her classmates and peers had tied her down with early in life. Because of her fathers, her face, her personality... Because of so many different things – little things that nobody seemed to bother with if it was about anyone other than Rachel Berry. She'd always been different, never understanding why that was so bad, why she was walking around with a target on her face and back. The attacks came from all sides: stabbed in the back by supposed friends, assaulted verbally and physically to her face by everyone, friend or otherwise. Why had acknowledging that she was different - that she felt special and worthy - made her so un-loveable? Wasn't everyone different? Those were the questions she'd tried to find the answers for all her life. Her therapist, fathers, her new friends later in life - they had all assured her that there was nothing wrong with her, there was nothing wrong with being different.
Different was a good thing.
Hearing it had never helped; she still had an empty space that couldn't be filled. And when she still couldn't find a way to sate her hunger for acceptance she threw herself headlong in to her voice and that dream of bright lights and adoring fans. Her fans would love her. They would call her name and look at her with stars in their eyes. They'd grow up hearing her voice and wishing that someday they could be like her. She would be everything she ever wanted, get everything she'd desired.
It was all there, waiting for her at the end of the race she was running.
But the thing was… the fame, the wealth, the fans – once she had them, once her dream had become reality - she still felt like something was missing. It wasn't quite right, and she didn't know where to go from there. She'd created her reality - pushed and pulled and broken and repaired herself to build that person she thought she wanted to be, and she'd never felt more alone. Friends, boyfriends, agents and managers, make-up teams, and screaming hordes of fans who all shouted their love for her… and still nothing had changed. Success left nothing but the taste of ash in her mouth and the painful memories of her younger self dripping in milk while classmates mooed at her. Memories of taunting and exclusion and standing in a puddles of ice and corn-syrup, sticky face covered as she cried over her continued failure at being anything other than a target.
Worse still, while she still loved to sing, singing itself was slowly evolving into something altogether different. Darker, danker - a prison that she'd put the bars on herself. The stage became her cage and her voice lost its depth. She was singing to shadows, no longer pleading to be heard and no longer so earnest in her desperation - the song of a prisoner who knew they were never going to get out.
She sang in the shower, in the car, while cooking, during stupid karaoke nights at bars and felt again that longing to be heard and understood, when it was just her for her. But on the stage and under those lights, covered in make-up and dressed up as someone who would never be Rachel Berry, the feeling dimmed.
She'd started to lose her connection to the words coming from her throat.
It was devastating.
Rachel was lost. Her whole life had been about pursuing that one dream and once she'd gotten it… she didn't know where to go. What was she supposed to do after the finish line had been reached? Where could she run? Sometimes she'd thought about marriage, babies, and that cute little brownstone, thinking that - surely that - would fill the void. It could bring the magic back.
Except the world ended with a full system shut-down and reset, and suddenly there was no Broadway. No lights. No applause. There was death and destruction and disease. Her fathers were gone; her friends were gone. She was at the beginning of a whole new race, one that she'd been wondering about, but not the one she'd wanted to run.
She was terrified of the tangled maze of a route, not knowing where this new course would take her or what hidden dangers it might hold. Even more daunting, she had nobody to pace her, no running buddy to encourage her along the way and keep her spirits up when she hit that "runners wall" – and she had, multiple times; she'd smacked into it like an out of control semi-truck. Over and over. Her body was littered with the scars and her metaphorical heart was so mangled she was sometimes shocked it was still thumping along.
At one point she'd tried to stop it herself. Just off the starting line she'd stopped, saw where she was headed, and nearly ended it there and then. It would have been so easy to throw in the towel, to declare that she couldn't do it, that she wasn't ready.
After finding her home, her Daddy's… remains… she'd been filled with such despair that the weight of it crushed her down onto the floor. Crippling fear and overwhelming sadness weren't new emotions, but she was alone and so very tired of having to fight all the time. Every breath, every day being Rachel Berry was a struggle.
Anything further, any step outside of her childhood home would have only lead to death anyway. It was inevitable to her at that point. She was going to die and if she stepped outside the path wouldn't change; it would just prolong it, and she wasn't sure that was a journey she could take alone. Thinking about it, how hard it was going to be to struggle and fight to live another day and another, all on her own, until death finally caught up to her… she'd decided that it would be much easier to go out quickly, to put herself out of her misery and avoid a horrible death. She'd found Mick, her Daddy's pistol, hidden in his office. It was the first gun she'd ever held, and she sat on the couch and considered it, all the ins and outs, pros and cons.
The muzzle was cold when she put it in her mouth, the metal foreign and disgusting, unyielding against the tentative touch of her curious tongue.
Everyone was gone. Everyone. Her finger had twitched against the trigger and then she'd closed her eyes and thought not about Broadway, not about fame and success, but about young Rachel Berry singing into a fake microphone in the back of her parents' car. She thought of dress up parties and sing-along Wednesdays, of being picked up even as a pre-teen and whirled around the kitchen while they all made dinner. She remembered them fixing knee scrapes and bee stings, letting her sleep nestled between them when she had a bad dream. There was nothing in the world better or more comforting than her Dads – no place safer.
She'd pulled the trigger firmly and gasped when the gun remained still in her hand. There'd been a click and then nothing, but not the nothing she'd wanted. Jammed – it had jammed.
She saw the photo, the one currently tucked behind the visor in her Bronco, and realized what she'd just done, tried to do…
Mick - unnamed at the time - clattered against the hardwood as she dropped the pistol, and she'd sat there and sobbed. Cried and cried and cried, flooded with memories and too many emotions all at once to be able to discern what she was actually feeling.
She'd always thought she was fated for Broadway, fated to live her life on stage performing and telling her story through music to any who would listen, but now it seemed that wasn't the end. Maybe she wasn't supposed to die on stage and not by her own hand either. It wasn't her destiny; she hadn't found it yet and if she wanted to, if she wanted to know why Rachel Berry was put on the Earth, she'd have to be alive.
So she lived and she struggled, she shouted at thunder and beat her fists against sand and death. She became new, a phoenix rising from the ashes like she'd always thought she was doing being a Broadway darling.
The music returned, a balm to her battered soul.
Sometimes she hated God, hated that he could be so cruel by giving her back her voice and granting her wishes in such a way.
He responded by giving her Quinn.
Quinn, who was so angry and beautifully broken, who fostered familiar and terrifying feelings that Rachel couldn't ignore no matter how hard she tried.
Another curve in the race opening up a new path she couldn't see the end of. There was no way to know where the end was, if there even was one, but the idea that it could be there, looming on the ever distant horizon... Rachel didn't know if she should be hopeful or scared of what it could be. Would there be a finish line? Would they end together to the cheers of those watching them from the sidelines? Or would Quinn, her running mate, fall back? Would she be injured and unable to continue, would Quinn give up? Would Rachel? Could they somehow limp together across that final marker?
Rachel didn't know – but she wanted to.
And right now she was looking at another obstacle, something in the distance that could be a blessing or just a mirage.
Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. They'd made it, ragged and exhausted and stupidly hopeful, and Rachel couldn't believe in it.
It looked just like every other decaying city she'd seen over the years of her nomadic existence. Cars littered the grounds like tombstones and the buildings were mostly dilapidated – windows smashed out, roofs caving in. The parade fields had all died and were left barren, cluttered with garbage and scorched patches of dirt where grass had once been maintained by zealous Marines.
Now this dead town, this place that had once meant home and safety to those who had lived within its impressive defenses, now it was something different. It was special because amongst all that ruin there was hope again.
As much as she wanted to be excited, to fall to her knees and stare in dumb disbelief at the reality that her journey could be almost over, she knew that it could never be that easy. Nothing ever came for free. She couldn't let her guard down, even for a second.
She wondered what it would cost them this time, whose blood would wind up being spilled so the rest of them could scurry off into the sunset.
Quinn had always been fascinated by the ocean and with water in general, especially after her accident.
Learning to walk again had been amazingly painful, harder even than childbirth. When her physical therapist had started working with her in the pool she'd been certain she'd drown and she'd occasionally wondered if that wouldn't be an okay way for it all to end, sitting on the bottom of a pool with legs like weights watching air bubbles serenely float up to the distant surface. There was something about the water; it was magical – seeing the sun above shining down towards her, beckoning her up to the light – back to life.
Her darker thoughts never could stand up against that beacon, and she'd always made it back to the surface.
She felt that way again now, looking out over the ruins of humanity and seeing the distant glitter of the ocean so close and yet so very far beyond her reach. Seeing it once again represent the freedom she so desperately yearned for.
Strangely she also felt similarly when she looked at Rachel. Like she was the surface of the water calling
out while Quinn was still stubbornly seated on the tile floor with her unresponsive legs. It made Quinn feel paralyzed all over again and trying to take that first step that she wanted but was scared of, too.
Quinn shook her head and pushed all thoughts of strangeness away, tucking them back to be mulled over at a better time. If she ever found one. She looked down at her legs - her working legs - and flexed her toes in her boots.
She didn't believe in luck. How could she? With the life she had lived to believe in such a thing would mean accepting that she had the worst luck of any other person living on the planet.
Or previously living on the planet.
She didn't really want to think about that either.
Quinn believed in hard work, determination, and blood, sweat, and tears. That was how things happened; that was how she made her own luck. But sometimes, usually just about when she thought she had it all figured out, someone threw a curveball.
They'd been incredibly lucky in that "too good to be true" kind of way that had her stomach in knots. Like she was at a car lot, seeing all those shiny, gleaming cars that promised her the best deal of her life but stopped working once she bought one.
A hand had reached out to them, offering everything they always wanted: human contact.
Out on the ocean, safely and agonizingly just beyond their reach, sat a ship impossibly captained by a gentleman who greeted them as Captain Jed Bitterman. He was the answer to all their feverish prayers and heat stroke induced delusions. Alone on the water, unable to crew his ship by himself, this crusty man of the sea who was used to battling nature and circumstance called out on the radio and offered help to those trapped on land.
To the others – to Alex, Chevy, even Luz – it was cause for celebration. They were saved.
Quinn couldn't bring herself to cheer with them, forcing a smile that was all lip and no teeth.
There was always a catch.
Pregnant at sixteen.
Paralyzed her senior year, right after getting her life together.
So many other things. She thought of Lucy and Russell Fabray, of being homeless and lost and so terribly angry.
She felt Rachel approach before she saw her, fingers twitching in anticipation right before Rachel's hand slid into hers, the grip warm and reassuring. The coil in her stomach unwound, loosening just a notch from the simple contact she was beginning to crave in a way that she didn't want to think too hard on.
"Do you ever get tired of being a survivor?" Rachel whispered, leaning ever so slightly into Quinn's side, not quite touching but close enough for Quinn to feel her body warmth.
"Every damn day," Quinn replied and sighed, shoulders slumping under the weight that never fully left her.
"You and me… Rachel, we've been surviving our whole lives."
"I think – I think that one day I'd like to stop surviving and try living."
Quinn looked down to see Rachel gnawing on a raw bottom lip, her forehead pinched as she stared out at the base sitting in front of them.
"It's not today," Quinn said, smiling a little more genuinely when Rachel turned her face up, dark eyes scanning Quinn's face. "Today, we survive again and maybe we can live tomorrow."
Rachel's expression hardened as her eyes flicked back and forth across Quinn. "Can you do something for me?"
"I think I owe you a few thousand favors." Quinn shifted a few inches, twisting to face Rachel fully. The hand not encased in Rachel's grip itched with the urge to touch – to try and smooth that furrowed brow, or wipe the dirt off Rachel's cheek. She suppressed the desire easily enough, more than used to squashing feelings lest she reveal them and have them rejected.
Rachel drew in a deep breath and squeezed Quinn's hand. "I'm not done… I – I have things I'd like to say to you, eventually. I want you to promise me that you won't – You can't promise me that you won't die, I know that and I hate it because I want to beg you to stay – but can you please, please, promise me that you won't try to be a hero, just for today. I don't – I don't know how this – Quinn, I care about you, not just because you're someone from Before, but about you and I don't think – I know that watching you die…"
Quinn stiffened and wiggled her hand until Rachel let go; she'd tucked her chin to her chest, feet kicking at the ground, and Quinn tried to still the trembling in her fingers as she raised Rachel's chin back up, the sight of her tears hitting her like a kick to the gut. "Rachel, you're not supposed to be this sweet. I don't deserve it. But I – I care about you too. I promise that I'll be careful, as long as you do the same. I can't be held accountable for my actions if they're in response to saving someone else. Not when you'd do exactly the same."
The nod she received in response was jerky and followed up by the smallest of sniffles. Quinn did the only thing she could think – the one thing she didn't want to do but had to do. Her mind was screaming no, but she'd already opened her arms and Rachel, in a way that reminded Quinn in a poignantly painful way of teenage Rachel, jumped forward into the embrace, thin arms circling around Quinn's neck and tugging her down.
They held each other, Rachel's face pressed into the hollow of Quinn's throat, Quinn's arms loosely wrapped around Rachel's waist.
The world kept turning.
So Quinn stayed with her feet firmly planted but her head in the clouds, daring to dream about "maybes."
An hour or so later Quinn wasn't certain that she wasn't having a heart-attack; aside for the lack of pain in her left arm and shoulder she was pretty sure she had all the right symptoms. Rachel had left to do her "leadership" duties, which basically meant checking morale and issuing last minute reassurances to the people who so depended on her.
The second that Quinn had her over-stuffed backpack on her heart started to race, thumping so hard she thought she was going to crack a rib. Her hands were shaking, her mouth had gone unbearably dry, and she was already sweating, eyes burning with the sting as it slipped from her hairline down her face.
"Dude," Chevy commented with a side-eyed look that turned into a double-take. "Are you okay?"
"I feel like… this must be what Olympic athletes feel like right before the starting gun goes off," Quinn said, adjusting her pack again and clenching her fists around the straps until her knuckles ached. "I don't know if I'm scared or excited or what."
"Probably a bit of both," CJ interrupted, coming up alongside Chevy and peering over at Quinn. "Try not to pass out, please. The idea of giving anyone mouth to mouth makes me a bit queasy considering the decline of proper oral hygiene. No matter how attractive the patient may be…" She punctuated her sentence with a cheeky wink that had Quinn rolling her eyes.
"Why couldn't we have rescued a dentist?" Quinn wondered, running her tongue over her teeth and then wincing. "Or a hygienist? I could have settled for a hygienist."
"You'll never catch me with my hands near someone's teeth," CJ grumbled. "Thank you, but after the things I've seen that's an even firmer 'no' than before. Too many stories of children and some adults biting down on fingers protected only by a thin glove."
"You're a surgeon; you put your hands into people's guts and mouths freak you out?" Chevy asked, then laughed and clapped CJ on the back, nearly sending her face first into the dirt. "Awesome."
"I can't do my job if my digits have been amputated by cavity riddled teeth," CJ sniffed, shuddering. "The horror."
"Can we please stop talking about teeth, missing appendages, and horror?" Quinn asked, mostly rhetorically.
"Aren't you supposed to be a 'Scream Queen'?" Chevy responded, only partially teasing.
"No, I was in one horror movie, one, and it was more of a thriller. The 'Dead Beats' series was more action oriented and just happened to have zombies as the main plight my character was facing." Quinn rolled her eyes and punched Chevy in the shoulder when he stared at her incredulously. "I mean it! Those are action films!"
"Will you think less of me if I tell you that I never saw them?" CJ asked. "I much preferred your more serious roles. 'Eulogy for Crows' was my favorite; I cried every time. You deserved that Oscar, for sure."
"Thank you," Quinn said, ducking her head. "I was so shocked that I beat out Jennifer Lawrence for that one."
"Is that the one where you played the… exotic dancer?" Chevy's eyes got this distant, dreamy look in them, earning him another solid punch to the chest. "Ow!"
"Don't," Quinn groaned. "Don't do that. It gives me the creeps."
"What, I was just thinking about the role and how awesome you were. I totally cried, too," he defended, rubbing at his sore pec. "Geeze, don't think so little of me. I still prefer the non-horror horror movie though. That was badass – you know when you were fighting off that Twilight guy on the roof? Seriously cool."
"Taylor was such a nice guy," Quinn said and shook her head against the haze of memories. "I can't remember if it was on the blooper reel but I actually kneed him in the balls on accident when we were filming that."
"Hey, you guys ready?" Rachel called, drawing their attention.
Reality crashed back in and Quinn sighed heavily. "Thanks for distracting me, but looks like someone just called 'places'."
"It's going to be fine, Hollywood," Chevy said as he threw his arms around both Quinn and CJ's necks. "Just a nice walk through an abandoned military base and then a short helicopter ride down to the ocean. Very touristy, if you ask me."
"There's something very wrong with you," CJ muttered, eyeing him warily.
"Or very right," he argued, complete with a cheesy grin and waggle of his dark eyebrows.
"Would you quit hitting on people and focus?" Luz demanded, hands on her hips as the trio approached.
"Don't be jealous."
"Shut up and get over here," Luz snapped. "You're, for some reason I can't fathom, the expert here."
His grin turned lascivious just long enough to earn him a slap to the back of the head from Quinn.
"Ow! Quit hitting me, woman!"
Grumbling under his breath about violent movie stars, he knelt and stretched one hand out to draw in the sand. "Ok, everyone get to where you can see this. We're going to use a wedge formation, alright? There are some basic things that are very important that you all need to know…"
The energy that ran through the band of survivors was near electric. Everyone watched Chevy sketch in the sand with rapt attention, weary eyes sparking with life as the plan was laid out for them. Quinn looked from those faces down to Chevy, marveling again at how lucky she'd been to run into him, Luz, and Alex. He was so obviously in his element falling back onto training, used to the harshest environments the world had to offer and working through plans – even teaching them to "troops".
She could almost allow herself to trip into the daydream that she was back on set or location getting a safety briefing or having a sequence explained to both her and the extras gathered around their expert. Almost.
There were so many times over the years when she'd been struck by surrealistic nature of her new life. So much of it felt like a dream – like she was stuck in a never ending project – that she kept looking for the camera, waiting for someone to call "cut".
Looking across the gaggle over Chevy's animated gestures, her eyes caught Rachel's and the glimmer of remembered Hollywood fell completely away.
Quinn knew, she did, just how implausibly real their situation was. The dead were walking, their ruined bodies and minds reduced down to the most basic of instincts. They were predators camouflaged in the wrappings of their former lives – animals in human's clothing.
Death in corporeal form.
Until Rachel, Quinn had been able to safely hide behind her memories - she saw make-up and effects when she saw zombies stumbling towards her. She remembered green screens and extras and Favreau cutting up with her between takes. It allowed her to have some sense of security that the end of the day after the last cut was called, she was only Quinn again, hanging suspended in mid-air by a harness and wires, grinning and giving her director the middle-finger when he made a cheerleader joke.
Now there was no-one to call "cut", either in her mind or in reality.
No green screen, no mats to catch her if she fell, no wires to hoist her to safety or allow her superhuman abilities. The extras weren't wearing prosthetics and fake gore. Any blood spilt wouldn't be manufactured for the stage. If there was friendly fire there wouldn't be strategically placed squibs erupting under clothes, it would all be real.
Real.
If anyone – if Rachel – was bitten, or harmed in any way, they wouldn't fall down oh so dramatically only to pop up again, grinning around fake-blood smeared features.
It knocked the wind out of Quinn, setting her hands back to shaking as her brain slammed back into the moment.
"So to reiterate, we're going in through the main entrance and then heading south down to the flight line," Chevy concluded and pointed up at Luz. "Our tour guide today is the angry Marine there; she'll be in group one. All you have to do is keep eyes on the point group and you'll be fine. Roger?"
The group grumbled and nodded and Quinn's chest tightened just that much further. They'd agreed earlier that splitting into small "squads" would be better than meandering through like a herd of elk, but it meant that she wouldn't have Chevy, Luz, or Alex with her. Or Rachel, either.
Loneliness closed in and her hand twitched at her side, bereft of Rachel's firm grasp – contact that frightened but soothed, an anchor to keep her steady. She didn't want it but she craved it, her muddled emotions tangling together, the contradiction pushing her in one way and pulling her in another.
And then the grasp was back, Rachel's hand sliding into place in her own. Quinn hadn't even noticed that the circle had broken up for last-last minute preparations: saying prayers, checking and re-checking packs, assuring the children that everything was going to be okay, that they were going on a grand adventure to find a new home.
The lie of safety seemed to fall from their lips with alarming ease.
"Hey," Rachel said, squeezing Quinn's fingers, the anchor tugging Quinn back to Earth. "Don't hyperventilate, okay?"
"This is real." Quinn looked down into Rachel's worried brown eyes and fumbled to find her footing lest she fall in and drown.
"Don't get cold feet on me now," Rachel chided, smiling hesitantly.
"Real, real, real," Quinn's mind was shrieking, alarm bells blaring so loudly that she wanted to cover her ears. Beth was gone, home was gone, reality was upside down and inside out.
"Quinn," Beth said, all big hazel eyes and Puck's ears, her little mouth curled downwards in a thoughtful frown that Quinn recognized as her own. "What happens when people die?"
Taken aback at the blunt, but innocent, question, Quinn paused, bare feet digging into the moist ground as the tide lapped at her ankles. "I don't know, honey, but I believe that they go to heaven."
"Why?"
"It's what I choose to believe," Quinn replied, stooping down and tugging Beth closer. "Why are you asking?"
"Grandma died," Beth explained, with a touch of impatience – like Quinn should have already known that. "I wanted to know what happens after."
"Well what do you think happens?"
Beth squinted up at Quinn and then peeked around her out towards the sea. "I think we're like caterpillars."
"Caterpillars?" Quinn repeated, eyebrows shooting up towards her hairline.
Her daughter nodded, sun-bleached blonde hair falling into her eyes. "Yeah. Caterpillars die in their cocoon but then they come back and they're butterflies. So why can't we do that, too?"
"Maybe we do," Quinn said, scooping Beth up into her arms. Her little girl, the mini-philosopher, laid her head contently on Quinn's shoulder, never too big to be held. "Maybe we do."
"Quinn?" Rachel asked and Quinn shook her head, eyes damp and burning. "Where'd you just go?"
"Just finding my wings," Quinn explained shakily, squeezing Rachel's fingers right back. "You be careful out here, okay Broadway?"
Rachel's shrewd stare bored right into Quinn and she let it go, leaving herself open to whatever insight Rachel wanted to glean. Finally Rachel nodded slowly, the barest of movements, and then she tugged her sunglasses down from their perch in her hair and pressed them snugly up the bridge of her nose. "You, too. You remember what I said."
"I won't let you down," Quinn promised, and let go.
TBC...